Seven reasons to up your intensity

Intensity means ambition. Intensity means winning. Intensity means not being content to take what you’re given, but instead to push yourself to reach your goals. No athlete ever won an Olympic gold medal by taking a laissez-faire approach to his training. No entrepreneur made his first million by slacking off or rolling with the punches. Intensity is what unites these men, and what will enable you to become the healthiest, happiest, best possible version of yourself. Not convinced? Here are seven reasons to increase yours…

1. Confidence is king

Watch Usain Bolt or Cristiano Ronaldo ahead of a major sporting event, and they look so self-assured as to seem almost casual. But their swagger belies months and years of focused, intense training that lies at the very root of their world-beating confidence. If you want to strike the fear of CR7 into your rivals, you too need to develop that same self-assuredness.

You can’t fake confidence, but you can enhance yours in one simple, scientifically-backed way. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience showed that men who wore fragrance had greater self-confidence than those who didn’t, and this was reflected not only in their own behaviour, but also their attractiveness in the eyes of others. Eau de Lacoste L.12.12 Noir is the ideal place to start: cool watermelon, basil and lavender notes are enveloped in a rich dark chocolate that will make you not only smell like a champion, but feel like one too.

2. Spice up your life

Next time you’re in your favourite purveyor of Portuguese-style chicken dishes, cast aside the lemon & herb sauce and reach straight for the extra hot. A study published in the journal Human Nutrition Clinical Nutrition found that capsaicin – the compound that gives chillies their intense heat – doesn’t just set your mouth on fire, but your metabolism too. Load up on spice to turn your body into a calorie-burning machine.

3. Keep it NEAT

Going to the gym is an obvious way to offset kcal intake, but you can keep burning through calories all day with some neat tricks. NEAT – or non-exercise activity thermogenesis – refers to small, fidgety movements like drumming your fingers or tapping your feet, and The Archives of Internal Medicine revealed that even these seemingly insignificant movements can have a major impact on your metabolism. In the eyes of the bland, beige masses, intensity can sometimes look, well, odd. But if you want to get a cover model physique, you can’t sit still.

4. Work hard, play hard

When it comes to work, most people mistakenly collate quantity and quality: the more early mornings, late nights and weekends you devote to your job, the more you’ll achieve. This attitude couldn’t be further from the truth. Business, fitness and general lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss pioneered what he called the 4-Hour Week in his best-selling book of the same name – a sort of life manual-come-bible that some of the world’s top CEOs swear by. In it, he argues that we waste most of the hours spent sat at our desks, and that we could easily achieve the same amount in a fraction of the time. OK, so your boss may not be amenable to your working a four-hour week, but by making a conscious effort to limit your time spent working to your actual working hours, you’ll be more productive, and more content too.

5. Get fast, get furious

Whether you’ve signed up for your first Men’s Health Survival of the Fittest obstacle race or you just want to beat your 10k time, going for long, slow runs is not going to get you fitter or faster. Elite long-distance runners like Mo Farah weave interval training into their programmes not only to improve speed, but endurance too. Intervals can take many forms, but the principle is simple: combine periods of slow, steady-state exercise with bursts of all-out effort that spike your heart-rate to astronomic levels.

If you’ve never run intervals before, try the 10-20-30 method pioneered by Danish researchers and published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Jog for the 30 seconds, pick up the pace for 20, and sprint as fast as your tired legs will take you for 10. Do this four times in a row, rest for two minutes, then do it four more times. Et voila, with just 12 minutes of intense effort you’ll have done more good than 45 minutes on the treadmill.

6. EPOCalypse Now

The beauty of high intensity interval training (HIIT) over slow-and-steady exercise is that it not only takes up so much less of your precious time, but your body will continue to reap the rewards long after you’ve showered, dressed and cooled down. This is thanks to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which sounds complicated but just means the period of time that your metabolism is elevated after you’ve stopped exercising.

The good news for cardio-haters is that lifting heavy objects can have the same EPOC-heightening impact as running intervals, enabling you to lose the love handles from the comfort of the weights room. The key is to include compound exercises that engage as many muscles as possible (squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull-ups), and go heavy – we’re talking sets of five reps or fewer. Go hard, go home, and keep scorching fat even when you’re tucked up in bed.

7. Bring the pain

Some people are scared of intensity because, let’s face it, intensity sounds like a lot of hard work and like it might, you know, hurt. But that is precisely the pure, unbridled joy – the more pain you feel, the greater the endorphin rush when it’s all over. People have known about “the runner’s high” for some time – the notion that intense physical exertion leads to elevated mood – and the science backs it up. Countless studies have linked the aftermath of painful experiences to the release of mood-boosting, depression-reducing chemicals in the brain. If it’s long-term happiness you’re after, you have to suffer for it – you can’t match the rush you’ll get when that final lung-busting interval sprint is over.

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